School run by large academy trust threatened with closure. Down the road, new free school, run by same trust, recently opened

Collective Spirit free school, Oldham, which closed in 2017, with some former pupils heading to Oasis Academy Oldham

Covering English education reform is often surreal. Perhaps this is a polite word for how desperately chaotic recent attempts to organise schools must look from a town such as Oldham.

Last Friday, a page on the Department for Education's website revealed that one of Oldham’s large secondary schools, Oasis Academy Oldham, had had a “minded to terminate” letter published by the Department for Education.

This saw the school, run by one of England’s largest academy chains, threatened with having its funding withdrawn, following the second Ofsted-inadequate judgement it has received since it opened in 2010.

As of January last year, the school had 1,441 pupils on its books, meaning it was almost at its capacity of 1,500. So this is quite an uncertain time for them.